The current forecast: COVID-19 resurfaces a timeless American truth

How a pandemic is exposing the realities of poverty in America today

In my 25 years of life, I had never done this before. It had never even crossed my mind. Really, I never needed to. We had all wrapped ourselves in layers. An elderly woman pressed a scarf to her nose with a veiny-blue hand. Parked cars sat close to the entrance, humming lightly as they kept their passengers warm. A sleepy toddler was slung over a shoulder. My winter gloves suffocated my hands, causing them to sweat. The sun was far from peeking its head out, adding to the eerie feel of this Thursday morning. Our masked faces were trained forward, staying completely still, adhering to an unspoken pattern. Right at 7 AM, an employee outfitted in a black and red polo appeared to open the door. As if in a trance, the group sprang into motion and marched, single file, into the awakening grocery store.

Somehow, we’ve all been fed this narrative in the face of disaster: Consume. Shop. Get the toilet paper. All of the toilet paper. Bread, definitely. Flour? Do I even bake? Get it anyway. Make sure you get “essential” medicines: Enough to last twelve bouts of the flu. Buy all of it.

But what if you can’t? What if, even before the pandemonium of the pandemic, you weren’t able to get that medicine you need, even if for a simple cold? You had to make the choice between getting a little less food or a little less toilet paper this week? You were already rationing slim resources in your household?

Recently, I saw a Tweet from author and NYT correspondent Rachel Swarns, who framed this up perfectly:

COVID-19 has forced us to think differently, and fast. By exposing people who live on the margins of society, it has laid bare the inequities that have always existed, but haven’t always been acknowledged. Yes, this applies globally, but it’s a self-evident truth right here in the United States. Supposedly one of the most developed, industrialized, advanced countries in existence, right?

Similarly, Melinda Gates tells us that “Poverty compounds disease. Although handwashing and physical distancing are the most important tools we have to stop the spread of COVID-19, they are not available to everyone equally. It’s hard to maintain good hand hygiene when you live without running water in a tent city in Seattle or a township in Cape Town, South Africa. It is nearly impossible to practice physical distancing when you share a single room with five family members in a crowded neighborhood in Delhi, India. If you’re a grocery store worker who lives one paycheck away from eviction, making the decision to call in sick until your sore throat goes away comes with an enormous price.”

Based on recent research, there are four dominant attitudes around poverty in the U.S. today.

Bootstrappers: believe everyone has an equal chance at success; if you work hard enough, you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps and make it.

Strivers: believe there is much injustice in poverty, but there is a right way to get out.

Conflicteds: believe unfair social and political turmoil exists, but those in poverty have to keep trying to get out.

Progressives: believe current systems work against those in poverty and these systems must change to enjoy a just world.

It is not about categorizing yourself in one of these groups and simply saying “that’s me.” Recently, Olson Zaltman, a market research firm that focuses on behavioral science, had the opportunity to study poverty in the United States with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. We spoke with Americans of all political stripes with a range of opinions about the causes of and cures for poverty — well before the pandemic had hit the United States. We looked for the “red thread,” the universal sentiment shared across all the unconscious minds of those we interviewed in Syracuse, Hackensack, Portland, and St. Louis. And we found it.

The central finding in this research tells us that many of us are of two minds.

We harbor these conflicting and polarizing views and weave them into the fabric of our lives. Some “Bootstrappers” reminisced in awe of their immigrant parents struggling for work or food without assistance, but in the same interview talked at length about giving back to food pantries and their communities. We heard from “Strivers” who spoke with fervor about rights that people in poverty should be afforded, but how some were tight for money and didn’t feel like they could pitch in. As most things in life go, we don’t fit perfectly into one category or another. Each of us carries many often conflicting thoughts that are founded on what we experience, what stories our families tell, what we read, what we see in our neighborhoods and our social media feeds, and what we argue about or hope for the future.

The reason we do this is because our brains want to make things simpler for us. Because of this, when we are offered a new object, our brain likes to categorize it into a group. Our mind assigns each new object a label based on its similarities with other things in that group. For example, if I ask you to assign the following brands to a single group: Honda, Buick, Maserati, Kia and Jeep — you would most likely tell me that they are cars (without getting into the ether about deep philosophical arguments on this).

In a similar way, we use this process — called exemplar theory — to shape our perception of poverty. Our “exemplar,” or most typical instance of poverty stored in our memory, is the homeless person, the beggar, or the drug addict, informed by a plethora of sources.

Although some Americans deeply subscribe to this exemplar, our research reveals that most Americans understand that different types of poverty exist. They exist in the next door neighbor, the doorman, and the young grocery store cashier. The small business owner, the recently released cancer patient. Poverty has many faces, which is why it is such a pervasive issue.

So why don’t we do anything about it? Why are we asymptomatic about our own conflicted narrative?

One answer is that some of us want to put space between ourselves and those in poverty. There are a variety of reasons for this. In Olson Zaltman’s research, we analyzed not only images but language cues. Many of the participants used pronouns that distanced themselves from those in poverty, even if they were considered to be at or near the poverty line themselves. They used terms like “those people” or “they,” as well as names that signified the designation of “the other” like “animals,” “bloodsuckers,” or “aliens”. This fear was very primal, closely linked to life and death. Without conscious awareness of it — and without the added impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to influence thought — Americans dehumanized people in poverty.

Some of us dehumanize others to separate ourselves from something we believe we are at risk of. If poverty can happen to anyone, what’s to say it won’t happen to us? So we avert our gaze. We turn the channel. In this case, dehumanizing poverty is born from a place of fear. The closer that poverty is to us, physically or emotionally, the more anxiety and fear we experience by knowing it could very well happen to us. By unconsciously categorizing the poor as less than human, it is easier to avoid feelings of responsibility, guilt, or even awareness. It dissolves the conflict of wanting to eliminate the poor as a way of immunizing ourselves from poverty.

In another way, David Smith, the author of Less Than Human, describes dehumanization as a response to conflicting motives. They want to harm a group of people, but this desire goes against other deep and natural inhibitions that prevent them from treating other people like animals, game, or dangerous predators. “Dehumanization is a way of subverting those inhibitions.” he writes.

As former U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in 1937, “ The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

The pandemic caused by COVID-19 has shown us destruction, grief, and horror. Simultaneously, it represents an opportunity to provide enough for those who have too little, as FDR mentioned. This pandemic has delivered a not-so-subliminal message, left behind in its wake: we can leverage our shared fear to redistribute. To rebuild. To recognize those who may not feel part of the “shining city on a hill” facade that seems to have inserted itself in our brains across generations — first with the Puritans, then Presidents Kennedy and Reagan — and taken root there.

As former New York Governor Mario Cuomo said, “The hard truth is that not everyone is sharing in this city’s splendor and glory. A shining city is perhaps all the President sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. But there’s another city; there’s another part to the shining city; the part where some people can’t pay their mortgages, and most young people can’t afford one; where students can’t afford the education they need, and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate.”

This is unfortunately a timeless message. This message applies as much in 2020 as it did in 1937 or 1984. How long will it take for us to employ the fear that we all share and to fight back against this fear — and our instincts — in order to create something productive for us all?

As I stood in line at Giant Eagle grocery store on Pittsburgh’s North Side, I peered out over my mask in an attempt to surreptitiously people-watch the other early risers. There were carts bursting with food and some with only a few items. Ages from (I’m guessing) 3 to 70 were represented. Mothers and fathers stood in line with toddlers, teenage, and adult children. Young and old, a handful of representatives from almost every ethnicity. We had all been compelled to act, fueled by fear. Entire grocery shelves had been effectively wiped out. What if we could channel this energy for good?

We can start by leaning into the universal truths that we share about poverty. We know that universal truths can lead to action, so let’s focus on some truths that emerged in Olson Zaltman’s research funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:

• First, recognize that poverty is a state, not a trait. Poverty need not be talked about as something that stays with you always, like a stain or a chronic disease. Thinking about poverty as a state mostly caused by situations external to the person is key. This state needs to be framed as something that is temporal, with opportunity and responsibility as ways out. We are all living in such a state beyond our control now. How can this increase our empathy?
• Second, recognize the emotional toll on those in poverty. Although we all differ in our prescription of the solution, we can all move towards restoring agency, safety and self-esteem in those in poverty. In their book, Tightrope, Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn substantiate this, saying “The sense of degradation, of being labeled inferior, is a central feature of the whirlpool of the working poor. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has said that shame is the “irreducible absolutist core” of the experience of poverty. Poverty is about not just the income but humiliation, social exclusion, the stress of being forever lower on the social ladder.”
• Third, reduce fear of and increase empathy for those in poverty. Across cities, genders, ethnicities, income levels and more, respondents expressed empathy for those in poverty. They particularly expressed empathy for children, veterans and the elderly. Now, more than ever, we are experiencing or seeing negative effects of COVID-19 closer to home in the form of staggering unemployment. These require great empathy. Infantilization or dehumanization of poverty contradicts the message of empowerment that we are aiming for, so focusing on the groups that are illuminated in a positive light for many Americans may be a more productive way forward.

As we shift to a new normal, let us shift our views on poverty as well. How will you make the shift?

Sophia Yanik is a Senior Insight Associate at Olson Zaltman. For the full share out of the research or to stay updated with Sophia and Olson Zaltman, you can check out their website at olsonzaltman.com.